Ecstatic sensation

When you can simply be with the sensation of your emotion and experience it fully at the non-conceptual level, you will notice a dynamic reversal taking place.  The spinning energy that seemed to be generating rivulets of words and ideas has a vast still centre: like the eye of a hurricane.  From that experience of stillness it is possible to perceive that the obsessive spinning is not caused by the emotional sensation, but that it is in fact the cause of it.  When you realise the empty nature of the emotional pain, the pain dissolves into an ecstatic sensation of presence and awareness.   

p240, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Free energy

To relinquish analysis allows you to stare directly into the face of an arising emotion.  You can accomplish this by focusing on the physical sensation of the emotion as the subject/object of meditation.  Your whole field of attention needs to be immersed in the wordless sensation of the emotion as it manifests in the body.  If you can maintain the presence of your wordless gaze, the emotion becomes a free energy.

p240, Spectrum of Ecstasy, Ngakpa Chögyam with Khandro Déchen, Aro Books, 1997, ISBN 0-9653948-0-8

Every moment we live ...

If practice is a strong priority we should avoid weakening it by letting our other priorities contend with it.  So we should just sit.  When we get home, we should just sit.  We should sit again tomorrow morning and continue sitting in that way.  Every time we sit should be the first time, and every moment we live should be the last moment.  Remember to make friends with death, and let present sensations flow like sand through your fingers.

p143, Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen, Ngakpa Chögyam and Khandro Déchen, Shambhala, 2002, ISBN 1-57062-944-7 

Tantra is simply, the one taste of all sensation

   In Tantra, sensation is the path. That means every sensation: hot and cold; pleasure and pain; sharp and blunt; agony and ecstasy; hope and fear; falling in love and having a panic attack.   Neither aspect of these polarities are ends in themselves. Tantra is simply, the one taste of all sensation.  To practise Tantra is to ride the energy of duality.
No-one can be called a yogi, yogini, or tantrika, if they cannot experience pleasure and pain – and experience the one taste of the energy that is the ground of both experiences.

p10-11, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4

The empty nature of sensation

Tantra doesn’t exclude hedonism, but neither does it encourage it.  It is very much the ‘middle way’ that characterises all Buddhist vehicles. 
Tantra is not concerned with seeking extremes – even though extreme sensation can be cultivated as a powerful aspect of the path.  Fundamentally, Tantra neither seeks extremity nor avoids it.  The intrinsic power of any sensation becomes manifest through our realisation of its empty nature. 

p8-9, Wearing the Body of Visions, Ngakpa Chögyam, Aro Books, 1995, ISBN 1-898185-03-4